Liberty’s win streak snaps with loss to Lynx as Minnesota threatens for top seed in WNBA playoffs

NEW YORK (AP) — The Minnesota Lynx have had the best of the New York Liberty this year, winning two of the three regular-season matchups and the Commissioner’s Cup final.

On Sunday, the Lynx looked poised to win an easy one over New York before needing to hold off a furious fourth quarter rally led by Breanna Stewart to beat the Liberty 88-79. That kept alive Minnesota’s chance of securing the top seed in the playoffs.

“We’re the number two team in the league and we just played the number one team, and we’re really prideful about that,” Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Our belief to be successful every game that we play. It’s a hell of a win.”

The two teams won’t potentially meet again until the WNBA Finals, if they both can get there.

Bridget Carleton scored 19 points and Napheesa Collier added 18 points and 13 rebounds for Minnesota (29-9), which needs to win its final two games and have New York (31-7) lose both to earn the top seed. The Lynx extended their lead over the Connecticut Sun for the No. 2 seed.

The Lynx came into Sunday with a one-game lead over the Sun, who played Las Vegas later in the day. Connecticut and Minnesota play on Tuesday for the final time in the regular season and the Sun already hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Stewart had a huge effort in the loss with 38 points and 18 rebounds. She had 17 of those points in the fourth quarter.

Minnesota got up early on New York before the Liberty rallied to within 52-39 at the half. The Lynx scored the first 11 points of the third quarter and were up 74-50 heading into the fourth before Stewart tried to rally the Liberty.

“We could’ve gone in the fourth quarter and given up the game, put the bench in, but we continued to fight. We just said to each other, ’Cut it to 10. We have this energy behind us, we have this crowd, let’s see what happens,” Stewart said.

The 2023 MVP had 13 points in the first 5:30 of the period to get New York within 80-72 and brought the sellout crowd to its feet.

“I’m not giving up. Things happen, you see teams up 20 and all of a sudden they’re down,” Stewart said. “We just needed a spark, a pattern interrupt. having the crowd behind us really helped, and I was trying to make something happen.”

Unfortunately for New York, it could get no closer as Kayla McBride quieted the crowd hitting a deep 3-pointer to restore the double-digit advantage. The Liberty could only get within seven the rest of the way.

“It says a lot. It’s an understatement to say that’s a really good team,” Reeve said. “They have been the best team in the league. We were up 26, obviously, we played great in that stretch. … We were disappointed in some of our execution and you can lose your mind. We had to find our footing and find a way to win the game.”

The Lynx shot 55% from the field in the first half. Even when New York seemed to have them stopped a couple of times, the Lynx turned broken plays into baskets when the ball bounced right into their hands.

Minnesota held New York to 39% shooting as the Lynx improved to 14-1 this season when holding a team under 40% from the field. The Lynx are 164-8 when they hold opponents under that number since 2011.

The Liberty honored the NYU women’s basketball team before the game. The Division III school went undefeated and won the national championship last spring.